Between Two Worlds – Half-Life

for Half-Life

You can’t remember anything from your previous life or how you came into this cage of glass in which you have been living several weeks and in which these scientists have performed cruel experiments on you.

29 Comments

Between two Worlds is an old and perhaps forgotten release of the previous century. But this is not an excuse to avoid this one if you forgot it in the past. Even if the storyline is a little bit strange and confusing, the starting idea is quite original. You’re the result of a human experiment that was lead by some unscrupulous scientist who wanted to make a new entity between human and Xen race. Through your special power Xen has decided to help you becoming the universe’s Master (with the help of G-man) by making you free. So eliminate all grunts and scientist and succeed to finish this mission so that …you will see. Design is like the storyline sometimes well thought of and polished with some good ideas, sometimes not.

Conclusion
The whole unit is quite cohesive with some good ” cutscenes” , but what was really, in my opinion, the highlight of this unit was the fact that Andreas used a 2D maze at the end of this pack. Even if it’s a short maze, I never thought that it was possible to do such a thing in HL.

To put it bluntly, Between Two Worlds is a great mod. Featuring challenging yet satisfying battles and great cut-scenes and set pieces. The storyline is a little out of whack, and the maze nearing the end is frustrating to control (although highly original).

However, these minor flaws aren’t enough to mar the fact that this is a well-realized and executed mod.

Finally I managed to get a map pack to show in Steam!
What is not mentioned above is the exact structure of the bogus folder. I was putting it all together and it kept saying map “worlds1″ not found on server.
Iit actually goes like this: “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\\half-life\worlds” which has “autoexec.cfg”, “config.cfg”, “liblist.gam” (which only has to have “gamedll” and “startmap”) and the “maps” folder, in which you place the actual maps and “graphs” folder.The mod itself was very.. atmospheric, with the story (quite unique, but which I couldn’t follow entirely), the cutscenes and the music. It’s rather easy, no big/hard puzzles, a very interesting/never-seen-before 2D maze, which after one or 2 reloads, became a normal 3D maze, I don’t know why. The maps could have been bigger and I could say the same about the fights. Don’t remember much else. But I gladly give it a “Play it later”.

Before I start my review, I should mention that I have created a proper mod from the original files. Actually, that sounds way more grand than it really is. All you need to do now is to copy a folder into the correct location. Many of the comments above this one, refer to the original release, which was just maps and other files.

I can see why some players really enjoyed this mod. For its time, it was pretty darn good – released only a year after the original game and features some story-telling cut-scenes, but it lacks polish and a crescendo.

Some of the maps have edges that clearly are just left and ignored and most of the locations don’t make any sense. This is a deep design issue and hundreds of mods suffer from this, so it’s certainly not an isolated issue.

There is one map that changes the view from first person to top down, which was probably pretty cool at the time, but very frustrating. Strangely, I had to stop playing at that point and come back to it. When I reloaded my save I was back to first person, which I actually prefer.

There are some nice firefights – I particularly enjoyed the helicopter scene, although I beat it without the rocket launcher (He is the perfect example of a map with edges).

Anyway, it was kinda fun but not as good as some of the recent releases on the 100SDoN.

The story behind Between Two Worlds is only part of the intrigue behind it, it’s like Species meets Aliens; you are some experiment in a human base and you yourself is not of the human race. One mistake by an unfortunate scientist sets you free from captivity and your killing rampage begins Fortunately, it’s not just a simple killing rampage as most Half-Life levels with promising stories become, Andreas weaves a interesting but confusing story in this already artistically accomplished map set.

With the complex story in Between Two Worlds, things become not what they seem and the term Between Two Worlds is exactly that. The G-man turns out to be an alien, but there’s bad aliens and good aliens, you’re (of course) of the latter. Oh yeah, the lovable military is also involved in the scheme of things, as well as the scientists (which are enmies according to the story). What results are battles with many different sides and much head-scratching when you try to follow the logic of the story, which was very gaunt but there were enough shreds of the logic to give the furious action in Between Two Words the life of a theme.

The look of this is about what I would expect from the majority (not all) of mods/maps of its age but it wasn’t as bad as some. The author made it a story of sorts but some of the cut scenes telling it were a bit tiresome and the top down view section is not my cup of tea (I prefer a good malt whiskey), to overcome it.

Enter the room and it goes to top down, save and reload and you’re back to first person

At one point in the game you come to a door, it doesn’t open but you hear shooting on the other side and a Barney, the shooting stops and the door opens, go through the door at that time because as far as I can tell you one chance before it closes.

As with some other mods in the 100 the author appears to have had some ideas of what he wanted to do but didn’t know how to take I further. An example is the Barney on top of the semi submerged building he seems to serve no purpose.

Overall its worth playing when you have the time just don’t expect wall to wall combat.

This one didn’t interest me much at all. The gameplay is decent (with the exception of the top down maze) but the maps themselves are nonsensical and on the whole unattractive. A story is usually a plus but in this case it’s barely comprehensible which only serves to drag it down further.

The mapping is a mixture of decent interesting areas and filler material. At least you pass through many different areas, although the Xen area at the end wasn’t terribly attractive. There are cutscenes here and there which try to tell the story but really interrupt game flow.

The combat is pretty good, although you don’t get to fight against the tough opponents (you avoid the Apache and just wait for the Garg to be bombed). You get the standard medium strength weapons here, and you can find the RPG if you really go looking (and risk losing a lot of health on the way).

It’s not the worst pack out there but I can’t really recommend this pack unless you are just dying to see the top view gimmick – and if that interests you, I recommend Flat-Life instead.

This mod was pretty average at the beginning, but it turned into a bug fest towards the end.

The gameplay was the only thing about this mod at least slightly entertaining for me. The combat was decent and that’s pretty much it. The story had the potential to be really good, but I felt that there was too little of it and the cutscenes went on for too long, play Edge of Darkness for an example of great cutscenes.

The two areas of this mod worth pointing out are the Apache fight and the birdseye maze, both of which were done horribly but could have been brilliant. The Apache fight was just frustrating and horrible, if your going to force the player to avoid an Apache at least give them enough cover so that they won’t die within 5 seconds. I fell into the pit in the birdseye view area straight away and so when I loaded I found that I was in normal view and so did it normally. The original Half-Quake (not the monochrome ones) had the same issue during a side view area, but after every door you opened the camera would reload so it didn’t make much of a difference.

I was forced to use noclip because of a door that wouldn’t open for me (the same room as in screenshot 35) and from that point on I had to use cheats in a number of occasions because I kept getting stuck. Out of curiosity, can anyone whether I missed something at that section with the locked door?

I was forced to use noclip because of a door that wouldn’t open for me (the same room as in screenshot 35)

Go to the door and (you may need to use the “use key’, I can’t remember), it doesn’t open but you hear shooting on the other side and a Barney, the shooting stops and the door opens, go through the door at that time because as far as I can tell you one chance before it closes.

I noticed that you already said this in your recommendation after I had already posted the comment, silly me. Still it is something that should have been fixed, you would have expected that they had already found that error.

to wait with your reviews in the future till you fully understand how the mod is supposed to be getting played… I noticed often that you’re basically downrating most mods for no real reasons.. That’s not a good review and doesn’t serve the fanbase.

Almost each mod in your opinion has bugs that’s nonsens. Go and create your own mod to understand A.) how much work it put into it even in a simple mod like this one here.
And B.) to learn what bugs really are. 😉 As far as I can tell this mod had no bugs and the savegame cam issue is normal in that case. That’s related how half-life functions.

Btw: “Avoid it” should be only used if the map or mod has serious issues like looking into the void (graphic glitches all over in that case.) or when being total ugly in design or has a total unfair gameplay (no ammo, spamming millions of monsters which are also killing you with 1 shot etc.)

This map here for example is an avoid it title play that to see what I mean:

I will admit to be too harsh and generous with some of my recommendation images, and judging by other reviews I presume that I had less luck with bugs on this one than the others. There are a lot of mods with bugs that I have enjoyed, but the ones in this one were gamebreakers and I had to use cheats around 5 times because of a glitch of some kind. There was obviously a lot of effort put into this, but I didn’t have an enjoyable experience because of it and was probably because I did something the author didn’t actually expect me to view.

I haven’t made a mod myself, but the reason I have been doing these recommendations is to help me should I ever want to create one. Pinpointing errors/improvements to a mod would help, also I have been reading the other recommendations and they seem to bring up good points about good and bad things in maps and mods. Also if I did create a mod I would make sure any gamebreaking glitches were gone, otherwise I would sound like a right hypocrite.

Btw: “Avoid it” should be only used if the map or mod has serious issues like looking into the void (graphic glitches all over in that case.) or when being total ugly in design or has a total unfair gameplay (no ammo, spamming millions of monsters which are also killing you with 1 shot etc.)

Well, this I disagree with. I factor in what I would really tell the HL community in general when I rate a map. If I feel it’s not worth their time at all, it’s an Avoid It, even though I can appreciate the work and time spent to produce a mod.

Ok I think, the propper rate for this one is a Maybe?. And maybe because in 2000, oh god 10 years ago!, that was fun and exciting, but now with tons of mods after this we could say that definitely are better stuff and specialy about layouts out there, I mean this mod was kind of boxy, and most probably it’s best part is ehre u reach XEN, because of those huge xeninan caverns in there, on the other hand the combat was kind of lacky or poor in there there.

So don’t expect any miracles with this mod but play it because is in this legendary 100 DoN event.

Pretty solid, but definitely lacking polish. The story was a very interesting idea that could have been executed better. It was a bit buggy in places: at one point, an elevator door closed on me because I loitered for too long, and then wouldn’t open again, so I had to ride the elevator back up and then down again in order to get it to open. I also missed the HEV suit the first time I tried, which is just poor level design.

The story is that you’re an alien! Though, a weird alien that has human form, I guess. You were used for different experiments by the scientists, but on this experiment, the scientists made a mistake and let you free. The goal is to become the aliens” Queen. The story is pretty good and original, actually.

The combat was a bit bland. The Apache fight, like many mods, is horrible. The enemies are fairly placed a few times, but other times it really does become forgettable.

Overall, there are actually a lot of good things about this mod. But for the fact that there are a few issues, it could have been better.